Make it Monday: Daniel Finds a Poem

October 9, 2017

Every year Pennsylvania has a program called PA One Book, in which a picture book is selected to be shared with pre-K-k children across the state.

Through the Library, I have had various successes with programming for previous One Book selections but 2017’s choice, “Daniel Finds a Poem” by Micha Archer, was the perfect book! There is poetry, just in time for National Poetry Month! Animals, which we explored and learned in our local Lansdowne parks! Art! Well…I am still intimidated by “art” but was able to meet the author, Micha Archer, at an workshop and after learning about her process and “ART” is not quite such a scary thing.

Our county office had extra supplies and I requested some of them to use for all of the community outreach that I did throughout the summer. My library participated in the Collaborative Summer Library Program, “Build a Better World” and I thought we could “Build a Better Poem” which led to other activities.

In the book Daniel is trying to understand and figure out what is poetry. He spends the week talking with the animals in the forest to try and create definition which makes sense for himself and at the end of the books shares his results.

Here are some activities inspired by the book.

Spider

I saw a punch out game on Pinterest and wanted ro make something similar inspired by Spider’s Web

My volunteer drew a spider web on a piece of foam board and we colored the web using markers and colored pencils. I added some cups and colorful felt. Inside the cups I added various prompts, words or sentences, to encourage people to add a line of poetry.

In hindsight I should put the felt BEHIND the poster board. I was rushing so I did not have time to move the felt but when I use this again I will move the felt to the back and color the web.

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Animal Match

Those painted rocks have found their way to Lansdowne but I just was not feeling making them. Someone donated a bag of the rocks to the Library and instead I used the stickers we had from the book to create a match game!

I really thought that the library kids would scoff at this game but they really took to it! At the outreach events I would use the rocks to anchor my papers but when I used the rocks as a game the kids were eager to play. Their parents were eager to get stickers and create their own games at home!

We talked about the different animals and, when I had a copy of the book, we talked about the days of the week and that each animal contributed to the poem!

Paper Plate-scapes

This idea was shared to me by The Librarian. He shared a craft from one of HIS librarians and since I had eleventy billion stickers, we used paper plates to create a story.

For this craft we used two plates: The bottom plate was decorated with a scene. Above is owl who goes from day to night.

On other plate, that I cut in half, I added the owl and then put the two together with a brad fastener. I used a sticker although kids were free to draw and decorate as they wanted.

The result?
A paper pLate-scape recreating a scene with the animals from the book!

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I do not know what this year’s book selection will be but I hope it offers as many activities as Daniel Finds a Poem. This year I hope to be more on the ball and get books for my library kids and hope to recreate as many fun activities with the new selection.

Shameless self promo:

Here is the storytubeof me reading the book. Check it out, grab your copy of “Daniel Finds a Poem” using my affiliate link and enjoy!